The Heiress Apparent
by Aiyta
Summary: It was the summer of 1986 and a seventy-year-old witch, final surviving member of an esteemed pureblood family, had passed away. Many miles south, a tiny almost-six-year-old girl named Vanna felt as though she'd been punched in the gut - but Dudley wasn't close enough to hit her? (AU. Girl Who Lived. Vanna Rose Universe)


(_This story is part of the "The Vanna Rose Universe" series. Is relevant to next chapter of "Vanna Rose, the Stone & the Chamber. References to moment of relevance to the distant future. Very vague for this reason. Sorry. Enjoy)_

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**The Heiress Apparent**

Before Vanna and her cousin, Dudley, had gone to primary school there had been only one boy, Malcolm, from down the road who'd hung around to assist in calling her names and pushing her into the mud whenever it were raining. But now they'd joined a collective of similar aged children. And therein Dudley had found a plethora of willing participants to join himself and Malcolm in tormenting his pale, gangly cousin. It hadn't even proven a challenge. He hadn't even needed to try (which, unquestionably, suited Dudley down to the ground). Vanna virtually owed most of the credit to herself, in fact, for her paradoxical black hair and sharp, pointed nose that had drawn sniggers from the very start. And the clothes that hung from her body as though they'd tried to melt away ("even her clothes don't want to touch her!" said a classmate once). And that she couldn't have been much less coordinated with her stringy limbs if she'd tried. And Dudley, well, Dudley already had a lifetimes worth of stupid named to call her and knew precisely when to make his move. It saved any members of the class from having to invent their own insensitive barbs for the weirdest girl in primary school. They'd just adopted his instead.

Everybody knew, of course, that Vanna was Dudley's cousin (pity him, indeed) but that she lived with him was hardly common knowledge. Only his closest friends came to know that Vanna resided somewhere in the depths of Dudley's picture-perfect suburban home; hidden away (as she should be) but around the place nonetheless. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had tried to hide it, hide _her_, at first, of course, even from his little syndicate. At first, whenever Dudley invited friends, Vanna was allowed nowhere beyond the confines of her cupboard. And if she were to dare make the tiniest noise, well, they'd never explicitly _said _what would happen to her but she wasn't trying to find out anyway. Ultimately, that'd been all sent to ruin when Piers Polkiss shunted open the stairwell cupboard one sunny afternoon in search of a wooden broomstick, of all things. (And, in the furore that ensued he never found one. Not that afternoon, in any case. For which the local animals were sure to have been relieved). But there she was; weird cousin in a closet. And Piers shouted to Malcolm, who gawked and called for Dennis and there went _the secret_.

And this meant, for Vanna, that the _next_ summer's day was the first she could spend outdoors. When that morning had arrived she'd awoken almost pleased, with plans to read her favourite picture book in the back garden and imagine what it might be like to turn six (for her birthday was just over one week away). It had all seemed _so_ glorious for those first eight-and-a-half minutes, and then Mrs. Polkiss had rapped upon the front door. And in walked Piers, who set eyes upon her and stared, like usual, at the veritable walking freak show she appeared to him. All far too soon Malcolm was walking up the pathway and Gordon and Dennis were jumping out of a blue sedan pulled up beside the curb. So, quite hastily, Vanna had essentially decided her cupboard wasn't, in the grand scheme of things, such a bad place after all. But before she'd safely returned, Dudley and Piers zeroed in on her in the hallway. And she'd ended up at the pointy end of a broomstick (Piers had brought it with him. Aunt Petunia had lost all colour in her face for at least a half an hour afterward). It had all gone swiftly downhill from there.

After two jabs to the gut, another to her ribs and a preview of the morning's best conceived insults, Vanna had managed to extricate herself to the back garden. And there she'd remained until the early afternoon; wedged easily between the garden shed and the violet tree that would be removed two years later. (Which had everything to do with Vanna's fondness for it, and nothing to do with needing a strawberry bush instead.) It was then that they'd come around through the side gate, all five of them. And like the rat he so much resembled, Piers' skittish eyes picked her out irrespective of her floral shelter. Somewhere deep inside she'd quickly begun to feel even worse than earlier. The sensations she'd attributed to broomstick injury seemed to solidify in her stomach. And it had her jumping to her feet; although, perhaps that was the looming threat. Instinctively, her body was telling her to scamper for safety without looking back. But as much as she'd have liked them to; her feet didn't, wouldn't, _couldn't_ move.

Piers was speaking, index finger struck toward her, and Dudley was stomping past him. And the sensation in her gut sunk deeper; it tightened and twisted. Dudley was stepping out onto the grass. Dennis was already laughing. Vanna felt as if there were a see-saw spring coiling inside her.

And then, the coil sprung free.

Immediately the breath was whisked from her lips and oxygen vanished from her lungs. Vanna found herself pitched backward off-balance and unceremoniously flung over the lowest branch of the violet tree. And for the strangest, most singularly defined moment, she felt a sensation of solidification directly below her rib-cage. As if somebody had landed an almighty punch to her stomach. And then the violet tree branch, unable to support her weight even as small as she was, suddenly crunched and Vanna thudded down on top of the garden bed. Violet petals rained all over her. Her first reaction was, of course, to scramble in the dirt with eyes darting to find the perpetrator. And she quite expected to see Dudley looming over her. But that wasn't what she found at all.

Dudley, barely halfway across the neatly manicured lawn as it were, had stopped stomping like an elephant. In fact, he was no longer moving toward her at all. Neither were any of his friends. And the look plastered upon their faces clearly said that not one of them had anything to do with her predicament. Dudley bellowed. It was, perhaps, the first time _he'd_ ever called her a freak. Piers' perpetually squinted eyes widened in a manner that would henceforth become all too familiar. And it might've been the first time, too, that all five boys had reneged upon their decision to taunt her. Instead they departed. And they'd left her alone; to her thoughts, and her muddied hands and the petals in her hair.

Nothing quite like it ever happened again. Or, at least, not for as long as Vanna consciously carried the memory and periodically reanalysed every detail in her developing mind until she'd left herself more confused than she'd begun. But, eventually, it faded into the past. Somewhere lost with the other unconsciously superseded memories of a growing adolescent. Although, not as quickly as it had been expunged from her cousins mind. Dudley, for one, had easily forgotten the incident by dinnertime. And so the evening's discussion at 4 Privet Drive was one of knocking over Mrs. Figg's largest ginger cat with a broomstick end, rather than freaky cousins or violet tree destruction. Yet, if she were to look back upon that afternoon in years to pass (although, she wouldn't, for those years to come would allow little time for retrospection) Vanna might've understood it as one of the very first times she could recall encountering magic.

Meanwhile that evening (whilst Dudley enlightened his parents on the effects of shoving broomsticks into mice nests), three of the finest, most experienced goblins of Gringotts Wizarding Bank were gathered around a very extensive roll of parchment. And each had their eyes affixed to the perplexing result that had manifested itself in magicked print beneath a line entitled: _inheritor_.


End file.
